Thanks for this very helpful reply, Mark. I'm going to follow your advice and mainly aim at training members. I do want to be flexible about this though: some infrequent posters have some very good things to say that will help us all. But they're also probably more likely to be a bit computer-fearful and want digests because busy inboxes confound them but not be aware of editing subject and body. I really don't want to be so strict that I frighten them off posting.
So: Step 1a, filtering "digest" from headers will pick up most and I'll send those back to members to clean up for themselves. (But sometimes do what I can myself-see below.) Step 1b, I'll set default as MIME which will help in some cases, depending on MUA. Step 2, set repeat offenders to moderate, or if it's a widespread problem, every now and then check through the subscriber list and set all digest people to moderate. I might exceptionally see if I can edit and resend messages when I think it's particularly worth it and the sender likely to be flummoxed by being asked to clean and resend. I'm having trouble following the instructions though. I use Outlook 2007 on Windows XP so don't have Mutt. >> What you can do depends on your MUA. I do the following occasionally (when a quoted digest is held for size). I have admin_immed_notify set to yes, so I receive a notice containing the post as part 2 of 3 message parts. First, I discard the original held message. Then, using Mutt, I open the notice and then the message/rfc822 part containing the post, edit it...<< In Outlook, I get an email telling me there's a message waiting for authorisation, with 2 attachments: one called by the post subject and the other called "confirm 2ff72..." long string of numbers/letters. Test 1. "Subject" is the actual rogue post. I can use reply or forward, edit the message and address it to the list. I changed options to send in plain text, wrote approved: password at the top of the body and, just below that, changed the line "To: testl...@..." to "Resent-To: testlist@ ..." The message made it through OK, but appears to be from me instead of from the original sender, and has the headers written at the top of the body of the message in the same way any replied to or forwarded email would have (albeit changed to Resent-To.) So I've got it working in part and this will do if there isn't a straightforward solution. The "approved" bit worked and I could edit the message, but how do I make a "Resent-To" instead of a "Forward?" Which is what I think you mean by: >>and then 'bounce' it to the list. 'Bounce' is Mutt's term for resending the original message to additional recipients. This is not forwarding; it is resending with the original headers. Not all MUAs can do this.<< Is it possible in Outlook? Another odd thing is that although it's been approved (via email) and received by list members, the original post is still sitting in the admin queue on the web interface. So I'll need to remember to delete it manually. One of the wiki pages you linked to, about editing messages before approving them (thank you, very helpful) says, >>If this feature is not available in your MUA, you can still post the edited message directly if you are on a machine with an MTA, e.g., sendmail, etc., by saving the edited message in a file and giving a command similar to the following: /path/to/sendmail l...@example.com < edited_message_file<< I haven't a clue what any of that means so guess it's beyond me. Thanks for the other links too. I'll explore them but after a quick read, I think it's likely to be beyond me. Good advice too about server space being so cheap compared with the amount of time I could spend tidying up digests and archives. Thank you again for such a helpful reply. Any solutions getting Resent-To (Bounce?) to work through Outlook? Clare -----Original Message----- From: Mark Sapiro [mailto:m...@msapiro.net] Sent: 29 December 2009 15:06 To: Clare Redstone; mailman-users@python.org Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] Replying to digests Clare Redstone wrote: > >I'm in the process of setting up Mailman for a discussion group of about 100 >members. From past experience, I know some people will prefer to have digest >but they'll also probably just hit the "reply" button without editing the >subject or deleting anything automatically included. I think this will mean >their replies will contain the entire digest: difficult to work out which >message they're replying to and using archive space on the server. > > > >1. How do I stop this happening? > > > >At the moment, the only thing I can think of is to filter out messages >containing "digest" in the subject line and hold those for moderation. You can do that with Privacy options ... -> Spam filters -> header_filter_rules, or you can just moderate all members or all digest members and reject their posts until they learn. You can also set General Options -> max_message_size small enough to catch these. In particular, if digests are triggered on size only, you should be able to find a sweet spot that will catch all quoted digests but not most 'good' posts. >2. Can I also filter messages with "digest" in the body? I can't see >where to do this in the administrative interface. No. Filtering on anything in the message body requires a custom handler. See the FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/l4A9>. >3. When I'm reviewing a message held for moderation, can I edit it to >remove unwanted bits of the digest? I need to do this without altering the >sender's details so members know the message is from them and not from me? >When I click on the message in the moderation queue, I can see a message >excerpt but can't see how to edit it. Without source modifications, you can't edit a held message from the admindb interface. What you can do depends on your MUA. I do the following occasionally (when a quoted digest is held for size). I have admin_immed_notify set to yes, so I receive a notice containing the post as part 2 of 3 message parts. First, I discard the original held message. Then, using Mutt, I open the notice and then the message/rfc822 part containing the post, edit it and then 'bounce' it to the list. 'Bounce' is Mutt's term for resending the original message to additional recipients. This is not forwarding; it is resending with the original headers. Not all MUAs can do this. Also see the FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/24A9>. OTOH, you'll get more mileage in the long run by rejecting the post and requiring the user to generate a proper reply. >4. If messages have got through with lots of unwanted text, is it >possible for me to edit them in the archive? Otherwise my archive may be >unnecessarily large and I can't afford endless server space. This requires shell access to the server. See the FAQ at <http://wiki.list.org/x/OAB0>. (Note: These days, file space is a lot cheaper than your time to do this, even if you do it as a hobby.) Also note that if the members subscribe to the MIME format digest (make it the default), many MUAs allow opening an individual message from the digest and replying to it alone. It might be easier to train your users if they have this ability. Aside: I would think this behavior would be self correcting as it renders digests (particularly plain format digests) virtually unreadable, but the ability of users to blindly act in opposition to their own interests continues to amaze me. I guess that when replying to the current digest, the readability of the next digest is what economists call an externality. -- Mark Sapiro <m...@msapiro.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan ------------------------------------------------------ Mailman-Users mailing list Mailman-Users@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users Mailman FAQ: http://wiki.list.org/x/AgA3 Security Policy: http://wiki.list.org/x/QIA9 Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/mailman-users%40python.org/ Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/mailman-users/archive%40jab.org
